Ok. We've hashed this one before. And everybody joked about staking out their portion of the musical scale; 'Eflat is mine' type of thing. (personally I'll claim good ole C so even professional tuners & grade school music teachers will have to pay me). But this is ridiculous. Court Rules That All Musical Samples Must Be Paid For. Including notes and beats. Single miniscule events. The court sums it up with; "Get a license or do not sample," the court said Tuesday. "We do not see this as stifling creativity in any significant way." (Sorry, that's a direct quote so I hope it doesn't cause any trouble).

Part of me riles at this thinking, ok, then with this kind of thinking we wouldn't have had much of the most intriguing work from Stockhausen, Cage, Holger Czukay, Bill Nelson etc, etc let alone today's rappers & loopers. Are they going to pull all that music?

What the hell are they thinking? Do they have any concept of what they've potentially unleashed here? Are they going to have note detectives combing every release in every format to make sure no one sampled something even half a second long? How can you prove it was lifted after you've manipulated it? Since they have released music by rappers that sample, are they going to sue themselves? What's an "artist"? If I use a field recording, monks chanting, commentary from a shock jock or talking head, does that count? Think of the sound samples used in tracks that have run through here. What's "piracy"? If I sample but give my track away for free am I a 'pirate' or would that be Robin Hood? Does it only apply to "digital sampling"?

So we've got a bunch of human fossils that apparently don't have a clue about this slice of culture, and don't even apparently bother to define their terms, tossing off a descision that is all encompassing, probably unprovable, that has the snake eating it's own tail after gobbling everything else up.

Cretins. _________________Que la musique sonne - Edgard Varese

I was seriously tempted to give up everything and go be a farmer or something... - Jack Endino, Seattle record producer

In 2002, a lower court said that although the Clinton riff was in fact entitled to copyright protection, the specific sample "did not rise to the level of legally cognizable appropriation," according to the AP. The appeals court opposed that decision, explaining that an artist who acknowledges that they made use of another artist's work may be liable
, and sent the case back to the lower court.

I read the article. This did not seem that bad at all... it kinda makes sense really. Is this really a problem?_________________A Charity Pantomime in aid of Paranoid Schizophrenics descended into chaos yesterday when someone shouted, "He's behind you!"

well, i like to sample a snare hit from an old record and then take that single snare hit and programme a new rythmn with it..i could describe why this is worthwhile from an artistic standpoint, but does it constitute copyright infringement

another example might be the snippets of radio play text samples you use in certain elektro 80 tracks...unless of course the copyright has run out on these recordings...in that case, no problem _________________ Spiral Recordings

I read the article. This did not seem that bad at all... it kinda makes sense really. Is this really a problem?

Well, those machine gun samples you used on a piece a short time ago sounded like the ones I created for a soundtrack some years ago. Yep, I'm sure of it. Better pony up. Lemme see your license, son. _________________Que la musique sonne - Edgard Varese

I was seriously tempted to give up everything and go be a farmer or something... - Jack Endino, Seattle record producer

Well.. I am pretty sure my samples are cool. The radio stuff is public domain in the US. The same stuff has been SOLD for years by the tape shops and some of the tape shops have been in battles over the copyrights. the conclusion is that this stuff is public domain.
The other stuff is either from some old sound efx CDs/ vinyl with the rights cleared or I have made the stuff myself. I have relied on french, brit and US legal cases when I have used the titles of books as song titles. If the authour is still alive I send an email and ask for permission. I ask eeven though the book title is a quote from another source etc etc.

You can in fact use quotes in music.. and as long as I call this art and not pop I am entitled to quote whatever.

well, i like to sample a snare hit from an old record and then take that single snare hit and programme a new rythmn with it..i could describe why this is worthwhile from an artistic standpoint, but does it constitute copyright infringement

if it is infringement, i better see a lawyer.

Hmm.. yes.. technically it is.. What you could do is start a sample CD business.. then grab lotsa hits from old vinyl and stuff.. do some processing and produce a multiformat sample CD or ten.. Then you buy one of those yourself.

In the old days, you either stole a song or you didn´t. Disputes were handled in court. Nowadays with the recording industry and the labels in the middle.. they don´t really care about the songwriter/musician.. what they are after is protecting the capital in the actual recordings._________________A Charity Pantomime in aid of Paranoid Schizophrenics descended into chaos yesterday when someone shouted, "He's behind you!"

OK... some snare hits are just any snare hits.. who cares.. but then are better than others. If this had been a guitar solo by Jimmy Page most of us would have seen the point but for some reason drummers aren´t that musical or unique? There are some obvious problems here._________________A Charity Pantomime in aid of Paranoid Schizophrenics descended into chaos yesterday when someone shouted, "He's behind you!"

I tend not to worry about this sort of stuff because presumably the burden of proof is on the record label to demonstrate that the sample you're using is taken from a particular track of theirs... rather them than me!

I've always assumed that the situation is even harder in classical music when not only would you have to spot the sample as being from a particular piece, but also from a particular recording of a particular piece! That's one of the reasons I like sampling classical music in my hip hop tunes, you can happily declare the composer and piece but not specify the recording.... _________________This message was brought to you from Beyond The Grave.

In literature I always thought you could quote another source if you gave credit. This is the essence of scholarship and science. I guess the difference here is the profit the results from the reference. Still, science books make money. I don't get it? Seems to be a double standard.

Still, I can understand this interpretation. If recordings have copyrights, then every part of the recording is covered, even a tiny sample. Yet, there needs to be some legal definition that is more precise.

For example. I have copyrighted material that consists of hundreds of thousands of three sample sequences. These are numbers - 0 100 200 - 43 53 -534 - etc - all audio in digital format is made up of these sequences. Now, if I scan the latest pop tune and discover that there is a segment in this tune that matches exactly one of mine, according to this new ruling I could sue and win. This is absurd.

There must be some more relevant standard - like "the sample must be recognizable and unambiguous."

Even though the ruling itself is a bit funkadelic.. literally, the article puts the whole thing in context._________________A Charity Pantomime in aid of Paranoid Schizophrenics descended into chaos yesterday when someone shouted, "He's behind you!"

There is a lot of the low end stuff that that is pretty dubious. A friend of mine bought a 28 euro sample CD in a Music store some weeks ago.
It was called something like "The Ultimate MAXIMUM Catatonic Analog Synth Collection" or something similar.( MAAAN, those products names... uhhh )

What this turned out to be was pretty much a collection of samplings of presets from many of the Roland JV cards and a lot from some Yamaha and a Korg. They had just recorded the direct output from factory patches...
_________________A Charity Pantomime in aid of Paranoid Schizophrenics descended into chaos yesterday when someone shouted, "He's behind you!"

My buddy is a Roland nut... he probably even has ROLAND tatooed on his nuts. He also has a fair collection of polka boards from vendors like Yamha and Korg. He managed to recognize and find the first 31 sample sets on his hardware synths. The names of the samples were of course pretty inventive. They had splattered ARP, MOOG, OBERHEIM etc etc etc all over... but nothing of this was authentic of course._________________A Charity Pantomime in aid of Paranoid Schizophrenics descended into chaos yesterday when someone shouted, "He's behind you!"

Better hope Pierluigi Collina doesn't take up judging when he retires as a football ref then. _________________Where there are too many policemen, there is no liberty. Where there are too many soldiers, there is no peace. Where there are too many lawyers, there is no justice.
Lin Yutang (1895-1976)

Oh, is stealing snot illegal? _________________Where there are too many policemen, there is no liberty. Where there are too many soldiers, there is no peace. Where there are too many lawyers, there is no justice.
Lin Yutang (1895-1976)

Better hope Pierluigi Collina doesn't take up judging when he retires as a football ref then.

even reindeers know him. Isn't he creepy

I think he's cute - in an "I'll kill you all if you don'y stop this nonsense RIGHT NOW!" kind of way. Good job he's not working as a RIAA attorney or something....

Oh, the emoticon gets cancelled out when writing about him!_________________Where there are too many policemen, there is no liberty. Where there are too many soldiers, there is no peace. Where there are too many lawyers, there is no justice.
Lin Yutang (1895-1976)

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